I'm an infrequent snowboarder and don't enjoy trick riding. I'm also old and never tried a jump as large as the Olympics slopestyle jumps.

It seems like the girls were outside of their comfort zone. Could someone who does these slopstyle jumps explain to me why all these girls are losing their air balance in the semifinals and flailing their arms like they just started doing these jumps a month ago? What am I missing? I get flailing the arms will help them land properly, preventing injury, but even with flailing they were wiping out. Do landing these jumps require a lot of strength? Do women just not have this strength? Do they all just "have to" wipe out, because they can't take the force or something?

I guess if strength is the issue, the jumps would be smaller, which would make sense they wouldn't have enough air time to complete a 1080 and 720 is a monster jump, so are the jumps smaller for women? Why is a 540 and barely landing it such an accomplishment (at the Olympic level)?

I also know nothing about what gets someone qualified for the Olympics. Do the winners from local (national) competitions get to go and there just isn't a lot of competition among the women and so the standards are lower?

If competition is an issue? Why wouldn't a woman just train with the men? Like if I was a woman, interested at an Olympic I guess that gets into why do the tricks at all? I see it as gratification of outperforming one's self. Like adding an extra turn in some direction. The female halfpipe competition was even more surprising.

a lot less of that in the final it seemed...but i think it was one of the biggest , toughest courses ever..tight rail section and frikkn huge jumps, i think they handled it well

some women were asking for a smaller course, and some were demanding to ride the same as mens...oviously the latter won out. the biggest voice for riding the mens was Spencer Obrien, who ironically got 10th

The women usually do just fine on slope and pipe. This competition has been an anomaly. Maybe its the conditions? As you may have heard Sochi doesnt get much if any real snow from what I have heard. Almost all the snow you see is manmade and imported from other parts of the country. So it is possible its the conditions/grooming that could be causing it. In general, women dont get as much speed or air as the men, but they do tend to be very clean.

The women usually do just fine on slope and pipe. This competition has been an anomaly. Maybe its the conditions? As you may have heard Sochi doesnt get much if any real snow from what I have heard. Almost all the snow you see is manmade and imported from other parts of the country. So it is possible its the conditions/grooming that could be causing it. In general, women dont get as much speed or air as the men, but they do tend to be very clean.

Why is that? I have always been sure that there are some biomechanical reasons for women not going as fast, or as high as the men(the major one that comes to mind is the weight difference). Am I right or sorely mistaken?

Take this from someone who hasnít seen any other slopestyle contests and has missed the men's ones (sometimes I hate the closed-minded patriotic selection of broadcasting channel... no Swiss in the final? then we won't show it. mehmehmeh.), so I have no reference to compare to. Three Swiss girls in the final, thus the womenís slopestyle was broadcasted.

And I have to say, I was taken aback. No ten horses would bring me to even only try to get on a Ė very low - rail, no way! Must be a very painful learning curve till you can keep balance on such stuff. And then seeing those (astonishingly sweet) rather petite girls tackling those fricking huge rollers! They seem to have an additional gland... Iím full of admiration